Reasons Why People Don't Bother to Vote in Elections

Professor Grant

3/29/13

English 101

The Reasons I’ve Heard Why People Don’t Bother to Vote in Elections

The American democracy is a government for the people by the people of the people. We vote to choose our presidents, senators, governors, and mayors. However, the majority of people who are able to vote do not actually exercise this right because they don’t believe that the chosen leaders can bring about the changes they speak of. Politicians are known for saying things that can get them in office, but when they get there it becomes a different story and apparently nothing gets done. This is a continuous style that most politicians are accustomed with. When politicians are untrustworthy it encourages people to not go out and vote, resulting in a lack of trust for the political candidates and a lack of quality in the leadership positions.

When a vast majority of people don’t bother to vote, qualified politicians do not get the number of votes they need to win. A popular saying when I was growing up was “The good have to suffer for the bad.” To illustrate, there is a class of ten students. Nine of the ten students are misbehaving, meaning there is only one well-behaved child. The teacher is upset at the behavior of the class and decides to cancel the fun field trip they were looking forward to. The nine bad children deserved this punishment; however the one good child had to suffer for the mistakes of the others and he missed the trip as well. You can have one good politician who seems fit for the position, but because of the lack of trust from the voters they won’t support him. He has to suffer for what the people before him have done. Now, a small number of people disagree with the ways of this qualified leader and put another person in office. This could possibly be a politician who is in favor for the minority of the high-class people who did vote and against the majority of middle and lower-class people who did not vote.

The idea of not having the...